


Three Too Many

by live_laugh_read



Category: Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:49:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2832170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/live_laugh_read/pseuds/live_laugh_read
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the fifth anniversary of his girlfriend's death, Tobias Eaton stands before her gravestone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Too Many

_Tris Prior_

_Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant_

_She died to save us all._

Tobias gazes at the small gravestone adorning the community garden in Abnegation. It has been five years, but the pain of her death affects him no less. She was sixteen when she died, he thinks. If she had lived she would have reached seventeen a month later. But she did not live, and it is her loved ones who are paying the cost of her death daily. Tobias himself would not have been able to come here without Christina, who has been his support since his girlfriend’s death.

It was decided that while Tris’ body was cremated, the headstone should be erected in Abnegation. At the end she was Dauntless to her bones, but Abnegation was where she sprang from. Her roots, and his, lie in the faction of the selfless. However, anyone witnessing her death would believe she had aptitude for only two factions, rather than three: she was Dauntless, entering the Weapons Lab and knowing it was a suicide mission. It was also, however, a selfless act, done to save her brother, the last true blood family she had left.

Three lives were lost in that war, three that Tobias knew. Three too many. Each time he visits their graves, each time he stands with the other Dauntless at the annual factions’ memorial ceremony, he sees their names and faces in his mind’s eye: Tris Prior, Will Ellis, Uriah Pedrad. They have all three been immortalised as heroes, freedom fighters, and their names are engraved in stone at City Headquarters. Others see the names and their imaginations run wild with visions of capes and shining swords, but all Tobias sees are three people he loves who died unnecessarily.

Christina comes up behind him and touches him on the shoulder, and he lets her. If it was anyone else, he would shrug them off with a terse word or two — but because it is her, and she is grieving right along with him, he allows her to remain. In the preceding years, Christina has stood as sister, mother, and best friend to him. She too lost those three, and Will’s death affects her just as Tris’s affects him. Both of them are certain at this point that as long as the memories remain, there can be no attempting another relationship. Tris was it for Tobias, and he is sure that, if given time, the two of them would have been attending Will and Christina’s wedding.

None of that will ever happen now, except in dreams. For the time being, however, Tobias has Christina to lean on for support, and she has him. Their friendship was born out of the ashes of broken dreams, and it has grown into a wonderful thing. The future will get gradually brighter, but Tobias will never stop waiting for the day when he is called home to Tris — on that day, he will willingly take flight to join her.

Just like the ravens that adorned her collarbone.

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE NOTE: I am aware that Will is not, in canon, given a surname, so I took the liberty of giving him one.


End file.
